It stars Bryce Dallas Howard, Joaquin Phoenix, Adrien Brody, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, and Brendan Gleeson.

In 19th-century Pennsylvania, a small, remote village lives in fear of nameless humanoid-creatures that inhabit the surrounding woods.

Following a young villager's death due to illness, Lucius Hunt requests, and is denied, the elders' permission to travel through the woods and retrieve medical supplies from "the towns" to avoid similar tragedies.

Before they can marry, Noah Percy, a young man with an apparent developmental disability, stabs Lucius out of jealousy, seriously wounding him.

Edward defies the other elders by sending Ivy, accompanied by two young males, through the forest to retrieve medicine for Lucius, who clings to life.

He then admits the creatures are actually the elders disguised as the monsters to perpetuate the legend and scare and deter younger members from leaving.

Edward's family fortune funds the wildlife reserve, built the village inside it, and even paid the government to make it a no-fly zone.

The elders' boxes are shown to contain mementos and other items from their earlier lives; their voices are heard recalling past traumas.

Edward comforts Noah's grieving parents by saying that his death will enable them to continue the farce that creatures inhabit the woods.

The site's critics' consensus reads, "The Village is appropriately creepy, but Shyamalan's signature twist ending disappoints.

[19] Slate's Michael Agger commented that Shyamalan was continuing in a pattern of making "sealed-off movies that [fall] apart when exposed to outside logic.

Critic Jeffrey Westhoff commented that though the film had its shortcomings, these did not necessarily render it a bad movie, and that "Shyamalan's orchestration of mood and terror is as adroit as ever.

"[21] Philip Horne of The Daily Telegraph in a later review noted "this exquisitely crafted allegory of American soul-searching seems to have been widely misunderstood."

"[26] In France, the Cahiers du cinéma praised the movie, putting it in second place (tie) in their 2004 annual top list.

[28] But the general reception of the film remains mixed: Libération called it a "Jansenist turnip", which "pretends to worry about the isolationism of its ass-benitent heroes, but shows above all that it understands their fears and feels sympathy for them";[29] and Télérama described the filmmaker as "once again taking himself for Hitchcock".